Cruel Angel Theses

It’s official: three out of five blogs approve of Fuuko’s reappearance in episode 12. The other two were just grumpy old men who couldn’t stomach a little of KyoAni’s signature humour (it being an anime-original scene and all). Just kidding, and I’m not talking about the grumpy part either. I’ve already written about why Fuuko’s arc worked for me so we won’t go into the details about why Fuuko supposedly sucks since this works under the premise that, as shocking as it may seem, Fuuko as a character actually did some good throughout the seven episodes or so in which she appeared.

I have it from a very reliable source that Fuuko remains in character, even for the anime-original parts of Clannad like the crane-catching sequence and the classroom/wedding ones, where Nagisa isn’t present. She’s a source of humour throughout her entire arc right up till the end, and KyoAni’s decision to animate her first, essentially removing her from the cast early on, seems like a good decision on retrospect. Why so?

You can’t truly appreciate a character till they’re gone, sometimes for good. This was the basis on which Kamina succeeded as a character, in terms of both story and popularity — aside from helping Simon to grow, he didn’t stand in the way of what could have been just another shounen series by being there to bail Simon out conveniently every time he got into a pinch. By passing on so early into the story, he goes from man to icon, as the statue built and city named after him can attest to: a symbol of freedom, justice, and all the other manly virtues we now associate with his name.

In the same vein, what did Fuuko stand for? Aside from wanting to be recognised as an existence, you could say that she was a running gag in terms of how she spaced out that often, an object of hilarity, no matter how retarded it might have seemed to those who didn’t “get it”. Her disappearing meant that things were just that little bit less humorous, a Fuuko-shaped gap that would have to be filled by other people, none of them as laugh-inducing as the starfish fanatic herself.

To be honest, I’m glad it ended earlier on. While Kyou’s violent responses to everything and Tomoyo’s kick counter were in themselves as amusing as anything Fuuko could muster, KyoAni’s decision to merge all the arcs into one continuous story means that saving her arc for anything but the first could have meant an extra arc of starfish. This, I presume, is what made KyoAni get Fuuko out of the way first, and her unexpected cameo made me laugh and cry at the same time; a funny experience, as I’ve never done both together before.

The important question here isn’t “How on earth can you cry at that?”, but rather, “Why are you crying at that?”. Fuuko’s reappearance is marked by several things: Firstly, the fact that she’s obviously still alive, astral projection notwithstanding. Secondly, the fact that no one remembers her bar a remark from Tomoya about deja vu. Thirdly, her presence is made decidedly comic by how she appears out of nowhere and proceeds to do what she’s always done by grabbing the starfish, as if she’d never left. Finally, her remark about meeting again someday only meant that she’s bound to appear sometime later on.

All of these things taking place simultaneously meant that while I was indeed laughing at her ever-present eccentricity, I was doing so with tears in my eyes. It wasn’t so much equal parts funny and sad as it was bittersweet; despite the reassuring fact that she was still alive in some form with promise of a reunion later on, it still stung that no one remembered her. For all of KyoAni’s efforts to setup the starfish punchline amidst a dramatic attempt at crane-catching, her presence reminded me, much like Kamina’s heartfelt absence in the days after his death, that she wasn’t hanging out with the rest like she used to.

I cried with that in mind. Unless KyoAni does more Fuuko cameos in the future with regularity, this moment, for me at any rate, had the gravity of Yoko crying in the shower at the memory of how Kamina never came back to return those kisses, or even that scene in Fruits Basket where Hatori watches Kana pass him by, with no recollection of him whatsoever. Unlike these two moments, however, this one wasn’t sad in the overt or contrived way that Clannad’s critics have accused it of doing, and that’s why I’ll remember it as a worthy moment, even if other ones eclipse it in due course.